Hare'n'Hounds Valentines

I seem to remember saying back in November that I wouldn’t run three dogs again. Well, I did, and it was better – either because I was prepared for the chaos, or because everything just ran more smoothly!

Kim ran her G4-7 Agility first, had a lovely run on an interesting course, and won it. I can’t believe I get to type this, but Kim is now halfway to Grade 7! She has both her agility wins, and she’s enjoying these occasional competitions so much.

Dylan’s G5-7 Agility was a really nice course, but we got called on the dogwalk contact. I’m not sure if he missed it or not, I can’t tell on the video, but he was running a little slow and steady and for some reason, very creepy on the seesaw. Hmm …

Jet ran a beautiful clear on the handler-challenging Redmills C1-7 Jumping, and finished 18th. Which … well, it was a fast course and she was only 2s off the winner, so that’s a good result. She was also the top Grade 3 dog by a long way! We went straight from that ring to the G1-4 Jumping and made a complete shambles of the course, which was a little bit frustrating! It was a very difficult course for 1-4, but nothing we couldn’t handle … or so I thought. The most annoying thing was that Jet popped the last 2 poles of the 12 weaves again. We must work on this!

Kim’s C1-7 Jumping was the same as Jet’s, and she ran a nice clear but we had a silly dithering moment where I was just a stride lazy and it nearly caught us out. Think Kim ended up 6th or 7th, out of the placings either way but she enjoyed the run, a nice stretchy course for her.

Jet’s 2nd in the Graded 1-3 Agility was extremely unexpected! It was a nice course, suitably challenging, but had two aframes and a seesaw rather than the traditional dogwalk-aframe-seesaw. Jet’s Aframe is not her strongest peice of equipment, and she did too acceptable but creepy Aframes and I thought that would keep us well out of the placings. Apparently not!

Dylan had three jumping classes in a row, starting with his half of the Redmills Jumping. It was a lovely big, open course, and Dylan actually opened up and ran it really well. We got E’d, but it was a good run. I was happy! We then went into the G5-7 Jumping. We got E’d multiple times, but I made personal progress by practising what I preach and pretending nothing had happened and that whatever we did was what I meant to do. It worked for Dylan, his confidence was visibly up! We went straight into the BC Jumping and ran clear, he finished 19th.

Kim’s C5-7 Agility was the same as Dylan’s earlier course, and we had a slightly on-the-edge run but managed to get around clear anyway, and finished 4th. Not too shabby! Her C5-7 Jumping was the same as Dylan’s again, and we made pretty much the same mistakes. Clearly I learn nothing from my mistakes.

Dylan’s G4-5 Agility was quite a tough course for 4/5, but ran much better than it walked. I got to watch most of this class run, and wow, the standard of 4/5 dogs was through the roof! Dylan had a decent clear and finished 5th, just out of the placings, but I intentionally took him the long way around the pull-thru so I’m quite pleased with that.

Long time off from agility now, not back until April! I did want to try and enter some in March but it all got a bit expensive with the seminar and Crufts!